Recreational utility vehicles (RUVs) (also known in the art as side-by-side vehicles (SSVs)) are a new class of vehicle that has been developed by manufacturers over the past few years as an off-shoot of all-terrain vehicles (ATVs). While there is no “standard” definition of an RUV, in the present context, an RUV is an off-road vehicle for transporting a small number of persons sitting in a side-by-side configuration in bucket seats (as opposed to one behind another on straddle seats) in an open-air seating area. Originally RUVs were two seat vehicles designed to carry a driver and a passenger sitting side-by-side. Examples of such an RUV are the BRP™ Commander™ family of side-by-side vehicles (which is generally described in United States Patent Application Publication (US 2011/0209937 A1), incorporated by reference in its entirety in those jurisdictions allowing for incorporations-by-reference) commercialized by Bombardier Recreational Products Inc. of Valcourt, Quebec, Canada; and the Polaris™ Ranger™ family of side-by-side vehicles commercialized by Polaris Industries Inc. of Medina, Minn., USA. These are but two examples of currently commercially available vehicles.
In the current conventional two-seater RUVs, the engine is either between the two seats (as in the case of the Commander vehicles) or rearward of the two seats (as in the case of the Ranger vehicles).
As RUVs have increased in popularity, manufacturers have sought to increase the passenger carrying capacity of these vehicles to be able to carry two additional passengers. One example of such a vehicle is the Polaris Ranger 4 family of vehicles. The way in which this vehicle appears to have been designed is to have taken a two seat RUV and to have stretched it in the center and included additional seats for the additional passengers. Thus, the engine in these vehicles is at the rear of the vehicle behind the rear seats (as it is with Polaris' two-seat Ranger vehicles). While this method of design is useful, practical and commonly used in vehicle design, it does not provide an optimal design of a four-seater RUV as it is simply a “stretched” two-seater.
Improved vehicle designs are therefore possible.